


Reverse Slip

by Bhelryss



Series: slip [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: F/F, i wasn't expecting to make a sequel but here we are
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-23 04:42:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23005924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bhelryss/pseuds/Bhelryss
Summary: Then she takes a bundle, already tied together for the ease of the purchaser, and she leaves. And when she opens the door to her own home, and steps through, she steps out into a frozen forest. The wood clunks down around her feet, one log slipping free of the twine, and Selena shivers.
Relationships: Selena/Vanessa (Fire Emblem)
Series: slip [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1653391
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Reverse Slip

It’s an accident. Selena steps out one cold morning, breath a fog in her face, tugging at her scarf. Grado winters aren’t normally so cold, and this is a snap come early. It’s unusual, but not overly so, none of Selena’s instincts have her on edge. She just wants to run down the road to pay for more firewood, to refill the neat stack next to the wood stove. 

Vanessa left earlier, bussing a kiss to Selena’s cheek, leaving behind a garbled rush of words that Selena can decipher. “Going flying, love you. Be back soon!”

Frelians love the cold, Selena has learned it well. But for her own comfort, she needs the wood, she needs the stove. “I’m not built like you,” Selena frequently complains with a smile, tugging on another sweater with a wink, “I wasn’t built for harsh snows and cold winds.”

The grasses are outlined with frost, and Selena shivers a little through her layers. Dawn is coming, but the world is still grey and cold and quiet. Somewhere out there, in the iron skies, Vanessa and Titania are flying. For a moment, Selena looks up, and tries to spot her wife.

But then she shivers, and she keeps plodding. The inn down the road lets the residents of the town buy their cut wood for a reasonable price. Even in the depths of winter, when all of Grado’s people are cold, those prices remain reasonable. Selena considers herself quite lucky, that her neighbor is kind. 

“Captain!” Nethan calls, already at the counter. The early risers are huddled around their hot meals, and most of them don’t bother to look up when she enters. “Come for wood again?”

“Yes, unfortunately.”

“That dame of yours keeps you out in the cold so much?” He pauses, leaning on the counter and wagging a finger. “How cruel, your lady. Tell her old Nethan said to share the bed, and not leave our Captain freezing in her socks.”

“Nethan,” Selena says, smiling. “You always say that.” Cold fingers take a moment to follow their orders, but she has the money out and ready even as Nethan reaches for it. “Same as always?”

“No ma’am, this time I’m chargin’ double for beautiful young officers. I hope you got more money where that came from!” He laughs when she chucks a copper at him, and lets her go without further harassment. She laughs as she leaves, hearing the coin clatter against the floor.

Then Selena opens the door, steps through, and then shuts it before too much of the warmth inside can seep out. Breath turns into fog again, so she fidgets with her scarf to try and protect more of her face from the weather. Once her wallet has been successfully shoved back into its pocket, she takes careful steps as she braves the frosted grass. It crunches under her boots, and she sometimes takes too many steps, delighting in the noise.

Then she takes a bundle, already tied together for the ease of the purchaser, and she leaves. And when she opens the door to her own home, and steps through, she steps out into a frozen forest. The wood clunks down around her feet, one log slipping free of the twine, and Selena shivers.

It’s an accident.

A forest lined with snow and ice, and she recognizes the trees that are pines and not much else. Grado has a few pines, most of them along the Frelian and Renais borders, but she’s never seen so many in one place. Or so many so tall. Or so many in the dawn of a winter day. She turns around, hoping that her doorway will still be there, and she closes her eyes against the despair of its absence. She is cold, and far from home, and lost.

What here is familiar? Where is she, what  _ happened _ .

Part of her is already compartmentalizing. She’s gone, home is gone. Maybe this is magic that can be undone, that can send her straight home from wherever this is. Maybe it isn’t, and she’ll have to walk home. There are still options, there is no need for weeping, or panicking.

She can handle this.

The other part of her is heartbroken. Scared. She’s alone, all alone, in the cold. Vanessa is out flying, and she’ll come home to an empty home and an open door, and no firewood next to the stove. She’s lost, in some northern wood, by herself. No tome, no horse, just her wallet and the double sweaters she’s shaking in, and her scarf. It’s so cold, and this is all she has. She’s all alone, and this is what she has.

She can’t handle this.

Except she has no choice. This will either be handled, or she’ll freeze and never leave these woods. There are no other options. She breathes in deeply, holds it, and then exhales a fog. She takes another breath, and this time while she’s holding it she rubs her fingers together. She exhales, and the crackle of energy that pops out of the friction of her fingers helps her calm down faster. She takes another deep breath, and when she exhales, she bends to pick the wood back up.

And then she starts walking.

The sun rises, chasing away the grey shadows and replacing everything with white snow and dark bark, and emphasizing the quiet of this world. The only noise is her steps, as she struggles through the snow. The only noise is her breathing, harsh in her own ears. She wishes she were mounted, her destrier built for war and battle and taller than any of this...Whiteness. She’s not built for these harsh snows and this cold wind. She’s sweaty, and it’s still cold out, and the snow is melting around the parts of her it can reach.

She’s so cold, and she can’t stop. If she stops now she will be lost, and all her theories and possibilities will end. So Selena keeps going, jaw clenched to stop the chattering, her arms wrapped tight around the wood, and she keeps going.

“Saint Latona,” she grits out, “let there be a town this way.” There isn’t a religious bone in her body, but of all the gods, it is the saint who might hear her. Oh, let there be someone out there to hear her. She is a captain of Grado’s armies, and she refuses to lie down and die here, no matter how loudly terror beats in her chest, snaked around her heart and squeezing.

Her savior is a woman that seems so familiar and yet isn’t. Age has no presence on her face, and her red hair is mesmerizing. Selena is freezing, and grateful, and unable to say a word over the chattering of her teeth. Rescue is a house in what Selena can only believe is the middle of nowhere, with a warm fire, and two empty bedrooms. The sweaters are confiscated, her boots and pants as well, and she shivers in her underthings until she is given a blanket, a new sweater, and a pair of pants too short for her.

“You certainly are a tall thing,” says Selena’s personal saint. All of her damp, sweaty clothes are being propped up to dry, and she just shivers and shivers, trying to find a way to speak. “Oh sit down,” she commands, “and be closer to the fire. I promise you won’t be set alight.” 

Dusk had been setting in, and Selena’s determination and rigid hope had been beginning to shatter. There had been only the cold, and the shadows, and her unthinking voyage onward. It was just the weariness in her bones, and the stumbling steps, and her empty hands. The wood dropped a while back, when her hands had failed to pick it up. It had spilled across her path after a fall, and she hadn’t the energy to gather it all together. 

She’d gone on without it.

“Thank you,” Selena is the first thing she can manage to say, after a long while spent relearning how to not be frozen. She is still chattering, still bitterly cold, but her body is not so tightly locked around her deathly chill anymore. “Who, who are you.”

“No one real special,” No One Special says, coming over to prod at Selena’s face and to check her hands and feet. “Your circulation seems to be picking up again, that’s good.” No One Special turns Selena’s face with her hands. “What were you doing out there in the snow, tall thing? There’s no one out that way for miles.” 

“Please,” Selena says, meaning to press for a name, reiterate her thanks, relay her own confusion. She wishes she knew, she wishes she had any answers at all. She shakes her head, and is blindsided by her own exhaustion. No One Special rests her chin in one hand, and puts a considering finger to her lips. 

“You must be tired,” she says, and her face must be bathed in the glow of the fire, because how else could she look so radiant? “Why don’t you rest.” and she reaches out to touch Selena’s face, and at the second Selena feels that light, probing grasp, she passes out.

She wakes up in a soft bed, staring at a ceiling that is totally unfamiliar. A wave of confusion and grief keeps her there for long enough that she can tell the day has progressed by the way the light has shifted across that same ceiling. In their home, Vanessa is waking up to an empty bed. Did she even sleep? Did Nethan swear up and down that nothing seemed amiss? Selena lays there, clutching at unfamiliar sheets, and lets her mind run wild.

Then there’s a knock at the door. 

“Wake up sleepyhead,” No One Special calls, and it’s followed by a bright laugh. “You have places to be, don’t you? Places to be, people to meet again, roads to follow to where you belong. Up!” Selena does her best to comply. Roads to follow home, oh, how desperately she wants to be home. Her socks have been hung from the doorknob, so she retrieves them with a sense of bewilderment. 

Her boots lie outside the door and a little down the hall. Her pants, the ones that fit her and not the too-short ones that hang off her hips, appear to have been dropped into an ugly heap next to the fireplace. The house, outside the room Selena woke up in, seems empty. Unfinished maybe. It’s odd, and the oddness cautions her to move slowly.

“Hurry up.” No One Special says, coming out of nowhere to toss Selena her shirt, her sweaters, a tome. A tome? What in the name of the saint? “You can’t stay here much longer, I’ve got other places to be myself, you know.” 

“I, thank you?” Selena says, searching for her manners, her training, for anything that might help her slow things down enough for it to make sense. “Miss?”

“Don’t worry about that. Hurry up now, get ready.” And she turns around a corner and disappears.

This is all happening so fast, Selena thinks, pulling her sweaters on and shoving her feet into socks then boots. “Will you show me the way to town?” She calls out, tucking her pants into the boots and tying on her belt, wallet still in its pocket. “I would be very grateful.”

“Don’t thank me yet, young thing.” 

Selena wrinkles her nose, and blinks when No One Special reappears like a ghost right under her guard. “Oh, um.” That red hair is so striking, and her eyes so bright, she feels a bit dwarfed, even though Selena is quite a bit taller. She is put to an inspection, and Selena wonders what on earth it is that she’s being inspected for.

“You’ll do. Go on, out the door and then keep going north.”

It’s like she’s being evicted, she thinks with an anxious humor. 

“Go?”

“North.”

“Is there a town that way?” Can things just slow down for a moment? Can they just wait, for a moment. Can she get real directions, and a guess on where here actually  _ is _ ? Can she please just have some times to process all of this? “Do you know how close we are to Grado? I need to go to my wife, she must be beside herself with worry.” 

“Sure sure, this way.” And No One Special grabs her hand and pulls her through the empty, too empty home, and out the door. The snow is loud when she steps into it, though No One Special makes no noise. It puts the hairs on the back of her neck up, and she turns and takes a single step away. “No, that way.” No One Special says, forcibly turning Selena until she faces the right direction. “There.”

“A town?” Selena asks, keeping an eye on No One Special. “Grado’s not north.” 

“I’m all out of answers for you, Captain! Go on then, meet them again, follow those roads, all that stuff. I have a date you know, you’re keeping me away.”

And then, rather horribly, the house and No One Special wavers like a far-off heat mirage. And they waver, and then, in the span of a heartbeat, they’re gone. It’s just Selena in the snow, dwarfed by the tall, tall pines of some Frelian forest. She shivers, maybe from the cold, maybe from someone else, and she looks around. Snow...trees, pine trees and trees she doesn’t know, more snow. All she has is a direction, an iron vow in her heart, and a  _ thunder _ tome.

Well, at least she has a direction.

“North,” Selena mutters, clutching the tome close. It is an unlooked for comfort, a well-loved weapon of course, but more than that it brings her a sense of security. All thunder tomes have the same magical script inside. She knows it so well by now that she hardly needs to read it. Just because she can, Selena tucks the book under her arm and carefully, consciously pulls sparks from the environment. It’s work, because the cold and the ice take the bite out of the world’s charge, but she does it.

Her hand sparkles with faint electricity, and the  _ Thunder _ tome under her arm has nothing to do with it. It fills her with determination. If she can still do this, so far from home and in such strange conditions, then she can do anything. She can follow that direction until she comes to the northern coasts if she must. She can do this.

Determination abandons her after only a short time. 

It’s so easy to despair, when all there is is trees and harsh, glittering sunlight. It warms enough that her teeth stop chattering. She feels warm after a while, undoubtedly sweating in her layers. “North,” Selena says during a pause, “but to where?” The light is glaring, bouncing off the snow, and it hurts her eyes. Perhaps there is no  _ where _ , perhaps there is only this, and the sour, curdling thought that she could die out here and no one would know. The spreading worry, that this is the end of her. It is so easy to let that consume her.

But she has done harder things than keep her head in the midst of panic.

It takes both hands, but she keeps control of herself. She pants when she warms too much, and she takes measured, even breaths. She is going north, as best she can tell. That must mean something.

“Maybe it’s a little foolish to follow this advice,” Selena says to herself, because she is tired of hearing only her own breath, the noises her boots make, and the sounds of a frozen forest shifting in the wind. It is enough to drive her to anger, to frustration. She is working hard to move forward, and the only reward she has for it is distance alone. “I know she was real,” an uncertain statement. “I wore her clothes, I slept in that bed.

“I would have died, if she hadn’t been there.” 

Fact. Fact, and fact.

But she had still melted away into nothing, and there is no force in that rumored heaven or on this earth that could have done that. Maybe some great trick of magic? Something unknown, something that maybe those great heroes of the past could have done? “Some great old magic, maybe.” She doubted that though.

Even this far forward in the future such a thing would be known. Such a great thing would be despaired of, in Grado’s great force of war-mages. How such a thing could have been lost would be the grief of every single mage, herself included. She knows in her bones that it wasn’t old magic, the same way she knows when the storms will come by the way the world’s charge shifts and grows.

Whatever it was, however it worked, she will always be grateful, and she will always be slightly scared. It wasn’t normal. It shouldn’t be  _ possible _ . And it doesn’t matter at all right now, because she is still in a winter landscape, stuck in some Frelian style forest. North was the direction, so north is where she’ll go. 

The evening is setting in, the sun falling out of the sky and shadows seeping in to fill the voids that the brightness has left behind, and she’s found a  _ road _ . It’s not well maintained, but it’s still a  _ road _ . Selena stands in the middle of it, and is tempted to fall to her knees and pray to whatever might be out there to hear her. After her blind relief has faded away to free up the parts of her brain that had been entirely occupied by “north” and the cold, she stares down on way and then the other.

Either direction could take her to a a town, either direction could take her through more empty wilderness, and she would not last much longer than that. Does she go further north? Does she take her best guess, and accept what might come? The rest of her relief sours at the back of her throat, and she tenses up around her fear. 

She is a captain of Grado’s armies, she commands mages and other people who can touch the energy of the world. She might be afraid, fear might be a bitter, inescapable tang on every breath she takes, but it will not break her. Selena will not falter, though she may pause. There are no good choices left, on this snowy road in a country so far from her home. There are no good choices here.

Vanessa is left-handed, Selena thinks, homesick and heartsick and horribly alone. She flexes her right hand, and imagines Vanessa is there to hold it. Just imagines, because her hand is empty, and her hand is cold. Selena looks to the right and then takes determined, purposeful steps to the left. She went north, and now she’ll go west. There’s a town out there, where this road melts into another, and she’s going to get there.

The light is gone faster than she expected. It feels like she blinked, and the shadows had swallowed up everything that had been. The road is harder to follow, and the open strip of sky she’d been following is now just as dark as the tops of the trees that border it. She comes to a stop, and stares up at the sky. Even the stars seem a little different, a little colder, maybe. It’s a lonely thing, looking up at the sky. It should all be the same, but it’s not, and it’s a fresh bout of coldness ghosting over her bones.

“I want to go home,” Selena says, the words turning to clouds. Her words disappear before her eyes, and she presses her lips together in fear. The stars are unresponsive, as is the dark forest around her. She keeps going, because what else is there for her to do? Her emperor is in the south, her wife is in the south. There is so much for her to return to, and thinking of it puts a little fire back into her chilled body.

A dark shadow ahead of her, missed amongst the shadows of the trees and the snow under the weak starlight, turns out to be real. Not something imagined, not something simple. A knight astride a pegasus, which has Selena’s heart in her throat. Vanessa? It can’t be, but Selena is so heartsick, she can’t help but hope. 

“Hey,” Selena calls, “Excuse me?”

“You’re far from anywhere,” the knight says, dismounting, and the dim light barely gives Selena a silhouette. The knight, as she comes closer, is tall and broad. There is a bulky, warm looking hat drawn down to her brow, and Selena would bet all the money left in her pouch that the tunic is lined with pegasus down. Warm, light, and relatively cheap to collect, if you are a bonded knight. A big hand comes down on Selena’s shoulder, and she shivers. “Oh, you’re cold.”

“I,” Selena says, shivering again, like her body has just been reminded of how cold it is, “I’m afraid so.” She sniffs, and shuffles her feet, “I’m sorry, I don’t know where I am. Could you tell me?” The knight stares at her, and Selena thinks the knight stares hard. “There was some magical accident, I think. I’m from Grado.” 

“Magical accident?” The knight echoes, humming thoughtfully. She tugs her hat off her head, revealing short hair, and she slowly, carefully tugs it down on Selena’s until her ears are covered and Selena can hardly see. It’s warming, and the kindness of it puts a tear or four in her eyes. “You’re in northern Frelia, hun. The far north.”

The far north.

“I can get you to the nearest town,” Knight says, with the sort of slowness that Selena’s observed in General Duessel, as he makes his decision. “And then I’ll see if we can’t find you a mage or two to help. Most of the roads south of here are impassable now, you won’t get home until spring.”

“Until  _ spring _ ?” Selena repeats, horrified. 

“Probably,” Knight adds, not unkindly. “Come on then, first we’ll get you warmed up.” She shuffles Selena along, until they’re both quite close to the biggest pegasus Selena’s ever seen. (Which isn’t especially hard, Titania, like Vanessa, is tall and slight. And Titania, until now, had been the only pegasus that Selena had seen close up.) “This is Patroclus, he’s quite handsome, and a little overfed. Don’t tell the army,” Knight says, like it’s a well worn joke.

“I won’t,” Selena says, a little confused. Who on earth would she tell?

“Good sport!!” Knight says, “You can call me Betty.” Betty’s warm hand closes on Selena’s shoulder, and she gestures with the other hand at the saddle. “Up you get. I expect you’ve never been flying before, seeing as you’re a magic type, but don’t worry. It’s  _ just _ like riding a horse.

“Well, a little more fun. Up you get!”

Patroclus is built much more like her own horse, wide at the shoulders and darkly colored. Betty swings into place behind her, and reaches up and over to pat at her steed’s neck. With his wings held close to his body, Selena finds herself in a position where feathers swallow up her lower legs. Her knees disappeared behind the curl of Patroclus’ primaries, her toes lost to the darkness. 

“Hold on tight!” Betty says, and Selena leans forward to grab onto the mane. She’s survived flight with Titania and Vanessa, she’ll survive this too. But oh, her feet were meant for the ground, a mage like herself wasn’t built for the skies! Selena closes her eyes tight, focuses on the pegasi under her hands and her seat in the saddle, and waits for take-off.

He doesn’t dance into the sky, the way Vanessa and Titania like to. “We’re showing off,” Vanessa admitted once, with her feet tucked under her and a cup of something warm in her hands, “just a little. Most people have to take a running start. You have to be really good, your bond has to be really close and you have to work at it, if you want to do a stationary lift. We’re getting there.”

Within a heartbeat Patroclus spreads his wings, air noisily displaced. Rearing back, leaving Selena to scrabble for a tighter hold, Patroclus ascends with a single downbeat. “Stationary lift,” Selena yelps, grip tightening. Her knuckles must be white under the pressure, and she can’t bear to open her eyes. Up here, it’s so cold.

“Beautiful knight for flying,” Betty says, voice cutting across the wind. “And a beautiful night too!” And Betty laughs while Selena clings closer and frowns to herself. What is beautiful about it? She’s cold, she’s missing her wife, and Selena is in the air when her feet are meant instead for the ground. There is no joy to be found here, though Betty shakes with the force of her own laughter. This is not a beautiful night.

When they land, it’s in a small island of light. Bright, magical lanterns light up the streets, leaving the tops of the houses as dark tiles in a mosaic. “Welcome home,” Betty announces, Patroclus’ hooves landing softly in the snow. She leaps off her pegasus and holds out a hand to help Selena down.

“Now, let’s go see if my wife left out the soup! Flying always makes me hungry, and I bet you haven’t eaten yet.”


End file.
